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“Where’s your dossier on me?” Amalia asked, before brushing her hand over his, sending warm tingles through his entire body. “There has to be something in there with his name on it, if that’s where you read it.”
“It’s...” He leaped out of his seat and crossed the room in four steps, Amalia right on his heels. Swinging the door open he stuck his head out in the hall. “Will, Meg, can you fetch the dossier for me?”
Except his friends weren’t in the hall. He blinked, blinded for a moment by the bright, flickering glow of the gilded sconces. He turned to the left.
Empty. Just doors and portraits of a bunch of long-dead Truitt ancestors. He pivoted to the right and gasped.
Pistol.
Man too, presumably, but he couldn’t make his eyes stray from the barrel aimed directly at his nose. There was a rushing in his ears. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“David.” Amalia’s scream pierced the air as she pushed him down to the ground, her body falling on his right before the shot rang through the air.
More shouts and scuffling as Thad and Jay Truitt wrestled the man to the ground and his gun away from him.
“Damn it, where were you two?” David called to Meg and Will, as his voice and wits returned. Late. Far too late.
Footfalls pounded the floor before skidding on a runner. He scooted Amalia to the side so he could help her to her feet. Something wet and sticky slid down his hand.
For a moment everything stopped. The smell was enough to put him back in that place. Blood mingled with the gunpowder and...he gagged as Mrs. Truitt rushed through the threshold, crying Amalia’s name. She grabbed her daughter from him, and with Meg’s help took her into the bedroom, ordering the men to fetch a doctor.
He blinked, over and over, willing himself to focus, to lead. Not for himself, but for the person he couldn’t afford to lose.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Darkness. And shooting pain. All the way from her shoulder to her wrist. Amalia twisted as wetness dripped down her face, burning her eyes even as she squeezed them shut.
“Shh...easy.” Meg’s voice hovered above her. A cool cloth flittered over her face. “I need you to hold still so I can check your dressings.”
Dressings? What dressings? She wrinkled her nose as something putrid hit her nostrils. Fire radiated down her entire limb.
Her arm.
The hall.
The man with the firearm and—David.
“David,” she managed to gasp even as she winced. “David.”
“He’s fine, thanks to you.” Meg was fiddling with her elbow now and the burning had changed to stabbing. She thrashed a little. “You took the entire bullet. It lodged near the bone and had to be removed.”
Amalia moaned.
“Can you do that a bit more gently?” Her mother’s voice. And a great deal of rustling. From crinolines and silk, no doubt.
“I’m doing my best, ma’am.” Meg sighed but the pressure from her fingers didn’t stop stinging.
More sweating. And whimpering. How did she make the pain stop?
“Do better.” Her mother snapped, closer this time. A hand swiped tangles of hair off her cheek. “It’ll be all right, darling. You just have to heal.” Her mother’s voice was so soft, so gentle, so unlike her. Almost the same as when Simon—no. She wasn’t dying. She wasn’t. Certainly not without seeing David again.
“David.” She repeated his name again and worked to blink her eyes open, but her lashes stuck together. “I want David.”
“He’ll be back,” her mother said. “He’s been in and out for the last two days. The boy has barely slept—between nosing around in here and fiddling with every scrap of material in those damned files, wasting time, torturing himself with work. He seems rather skilled at that. We keep sending him away, but it doesn’t stick. He could use a bath though. As could you.” Her mother kissed her nose.
“We’ll sponge her down in a moment.” Meg spoke again. “I’ll just need help lifting her. We need to change the bandages, make sure the infection doesn’t become worse.”
The Pinkerton’s voice was soft now too. Dratted eyes. She had to see.
